Big drama in Combined

Last out of the female was the big favourite, Viktoria Meshkova, who already had won two golds in Moscow. At the same time Nicolas Collin, who had won the Combined qualification, entered the scene and did probably know he had to top. While he was resting we did see some glimts of Meshkova climbing high enough. In the end, all the hard rounds took out the toll of Collin and Alex Khazanov was the lucky man on #8 spot running around and being interviewed in the streaming. In the picture Aleksei Rubtsov (c) Nikita Tsarev

Suddenly the live-streaming shows that Meshkova was just awarded 12 and being dead last she was out of the Top-8 and the cameraman showed Meshokva and her coach looking not pleased at all. For some reason, the commentator missed this drama and in few minutes later Meshkova was up at rank #4 in both the Lead and in overall.

The overall winner was Eliska Adamovska who was the only one topping out the excellent route, meaning she is now together with Chloe Caulier and Viktoria Meshkova the favourites to get the Olympic ticket.

Among the male, we did see three tops and most unlucky was Hannes Puman who lost his Olympic dream by being the slower climber. Yuval Shelma, #9 in the Lead even two days ago, was the big sensation winning the Combined Lead discipline ahead of Sacha Lehmann who together with Segei Luzhetski are the favourites to make it to Tokyo.

Noteworthy is that the Speed winner, Marcin Dzienski, was #7 overall meaning he has almost guaranteed himself #4 or #5 in the final. This shows how strange the multiplication format is and that not the best overall climbers are the highest-ranked. In Lead, he got to hold #8 but as he then could not clip the third quick draw he down climbed a move and checked with the belayer before he let go and landed on the mattress! Complete results